Palin/McCain
and the Cult of Irresponsibiltyan exchange between
Régis Bonvicino
& Charles Bernstein

Sâo Paulo, September 4, 2008

Dear Charles,

Obama is the "beyond" for U.S. He will give a "public
dimension" to the U.S. government, away from Bush’s
treating the government as a private state. If Obama is
elected, it will be welcomed in Latin America, Africa, and the
Islamic World. W. Bush is maybe the worst president the U.S.
has ever had. The state in the hands of the companies. The war.
The torture. He is just like our Brazilian dictators or
Pinochet or Idi Amim Dada. Obama means JFK, Bobby Kennedy, Martin
Luther King.

The U.S. election in November is the most important election
of the last decades for the world. An Obama victory will be crucial
for Latin America in recovering the dialogue with the U.S. and
so bye, bye Chávez, Ortega, Álvaro Uribe, Cristina
Fernández (a thief just like Menen was). I can't see future
without true democracy in the U.S. and Obama.

Tell me please what do you think about Palin?

Love,

Régis

New York, September 6, 2008

Dear Régis,

During the Vietnam war (which for the Vietnamese was an act of
American terrorism), John McCain was shot down as an enemy combatant.
He was not given a fair trail and was subjected to torture. When
Sarah Palin, in endorsing McCain, expressed her contempt for
the rule of law, in a line that will live in infamy -- "Al
Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America
... [Obama's] worried that someone won't read them their rights?"--
she forever tainted any honor that McCain's war experiences might
reflect on her or her party.

Palin-McCain show the Republicans to be the party of
irresponsibility, refusing to acknowledge the consequences
of their policies: unjustified wars; torture; global warming;
abrogation of civil liberties; unemployment; erosion of even
modest economic and medical safety nets; big business control
of government regulation of their industries; environmental degradation;
bloated prisons filled with those whose principal crime is being
born poor, black, and male; erosion of the urban infrastructure;
decline of public education (every child left behind); putsch-like
transformation of the Justice department and courts into anti-democratic
and extra-constitutional hit squads coked up by their contempt
for the rule of law; increased number of unwanted pregnancies
and abortions (both U.S. and worldwide); compromised worker safety
and worker wages; unprecedented mortgage defaults; and catastrophic
shift of wealth from working class and middle class to a tiny
plutocracy.

The culture of irresponsibility and contempt for the civil liberties
enshrined in the U.S. constitution extends out from Republican
politicians to those who have voted for the Republican Party
in the last two presidential elections. I blame the voters --
for falling prey to their own resentments and racisms, their
homophobia, and intolerance. In 2000, to vote for Cheney-Bush
was to cast your lot with dark side of human history.

You ask what I think about Palin: She is a sinister figure for
the U.S. -- a right wing pit bull (her own description for herself)
who is at core against America's most democratic and socially
optimistic values. We hear too many commentaries in the mediocracy
praise the "style" of her speech, but my teenage son
Felix got it just right when he said, simply, that "she's
mean." The core of that meanness is related to the
Republican party's deification of intolerance and worship of resentiment.
You could hear it in Rudolph Guiliani's smarmy put down of "cosmopolitans," normally
a code word for rootless Jews and girly men but here used to
sneer at all who reject fear mongering -- as if Christian fundamentalist
intolerance is the answer to Islamic fundamentalist intolerance.

Palin is the case book example of Republican party's bait & switch,
the party's most typical modus operandi: a woman candidate who
is anti-feminist and opposed the most basic issues of civil rights
for women, on the order of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
as an anti-civil-rights black man. Palin represents a continuation
of the totalitarian aspects of Bush-Cheney by a party determined
to sustain those calamitous policies for four more years and
by any means necessary (including rigged elections and disinformation).

Palin is a jingoist nationalist, a proud "no nothing" on
foreign affairs. She'd insist that the State force teenagers
to study her religious beliefs on the creation of the world,
and, at the same time, that the State prevent teenagers from
learning about human procreation so that they will have the knowledge
to act responsibly in the world. Palin would undercut science
classes by imposing a state religion of her choice, in this case
a rabid fundamentalism (not to be equated with Christianity),
but she would deny freedom of choice to those who don't swing
her way. In the guise of Big Brother abstinence-only "no
sex" (mis)eduction for teens, Palin is responsible for the
abortions and teen pregnancies that result. But she refuses to
accept the blame. In a similar vein, McCain, who voted for an
unjustifiable war, and even now has not renounced his vote, refuses
to accept the fact that he is personally responsible for the
horrific consequences of that war.

Love,

Charles

“I wanna die in the beat of ‘bamba’"

Sâo
Paulo, September 7, 2008

Dear Charles,

Your letter is very strong and crucial. But
tell me what you think of Barack Obama's plans. What does change mean?
Who is he? Does he have content? How do you refute the Republican
line that he is a celebrity and not a politician
with ideas? It’s not that I think this, but I have listened
in São Paulo to upper middle class people say that he
is a fool! You know, Brazilians are more racist than Americans.
But the black people from Rio's favelas love Obama, their
new hero. They call him "O bamba" --
homophonic translations of Obama, that means in slang tough guy,
bully, hood -- the best, the one. This word came from samba,
from Nigeria Bantu I think. There is a classic song by Ataulfo
Alves called "Na cadência do samba": "Quero
morrer numa batucada de bamba / na cadência bonita do samba": “I
wanna die in the beat of ‘bamba’ / in the beautiful
rhythm of the samba."

Here is my essay on the election
from yesterday’s Último
Segundo (the São Paulo daily newspaper):[a translation of this essay will be posted here early next week]

You’re right that both McCain and Obama are “prose,” which
is as it should be. But it’s interesting, in this light,
to consider what it means that Obama is attacked as if he were
poetry, where poetry means fluffy rhetoric that sounds good but … don’t
amount to nothing! Just more elitist crap! –You don’t
need Wallace Stevens to tell you that the imagination is the
most democratic thing of all. George Lakoff has been saying that
the Republicans understand the election is won by metaphors not
facts, that voters respond to the world view they idealize (discipline
and punish for the Republicans, contextualize and ameliorate
for the Democrats). Unlike the Republicans, though, the
Democrats are uncomfortable with running just on metaphor, which
is all to the good, but not if it becomes a trap of the “When
will you stop beating your wife?” sort, which can’t
be answered by facts without making you look like you did something
wrong. “I love my wife, I never laid my hands on her, I
abhor violence against women, I contributed to the local battered
wives shelter, check the police record and you will not
see complaints, ask my neighbors.” On all the policy questions – from
the economy, to taxes, to the war, to the environment, to healthcare
-- the Democratic party platform is better than the Republican
party platform. Obama is a moderate, centrist figure and he will
continually disappointed anyone committed to a more left agenda.
I don’t believe he is tacking to the center because
of the election, I think he was nominated because he’s
a centrist. His whole “post-partisan” rhetoric strikes
me as a neoliberal evasion of ideology and history. But
on the policy questions, he is on the right side of history.
And on the crucial, and probably determining, questions of metaphor
and values, there’s no contest.

The irony is that Obama is all content
while the other side is all bait and switch. (You vote to protect
yourself against WMDs and you get a tax holiday for big business.)
The idea that Obama has no “substance” or “content” (too
many ideas not enough action, fancy words no deeds, girly man
that he is) is the Republican imaginary of discipline and punish.
The problem with the Republicans is not that they don’t
have content, of course, but that their content is hidden in
endless waves of Big Lies and small lies, disinformation and
bile. The Republicans are the party of audacious change
and after eight years of Cheney-Bush the question is how much
more change of that kind will the American people be willing
to take before turning against the devil inside themselves that
keeps taking the bait and then feeling betrayed. No, they
won’t respect you in the morning. And the love child
of this sado-masochistic Republican seduction makes the pods
in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers seem kindler and
gentler.

But the sins against the world are
just one part of
the problem. The sins against the earth cannot be forgiven.